


låt dig aldrig sörja (may you never grieve)

by kimaracretak



Category: Jordskott (TV)
Genre: Gen, Horrific murder-forest adores and protects (but doesn't trap) character, Minor Character Death, Post-Season/Series 01, Ravens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28392081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Colours deepen in the light, wolfsbane and cranesbill rising up from the buttercups carpeting the long way down to the treeline. The ravens are beginning to cluster in the ivy bed - three of them, now, watching the skogsrå approach with something like impatience in their clever eyes.
Relationships: Esmeralda & Klara (Jordskott)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	låt dig aldrig sörja (may you never grieve)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asymptotical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asymptotical/gifts).



> Silverhöjd forest loves two (2) hulderfolk and will not let them come to harm.
> 
> Watch _Jordskott_ for murderforests, changelings, and environmentalist fairy tales & listen to [Robyn's version of 'Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD8kmUZjyiI) for Feelings(tm).

Klara slips out of the cottage just as dawn starts to break across Silverhöjd, shutting the door behind her with care. Even now Esmeralda rarely sleeps through the night, safety still foreign to her after fifteen years without it, and the last thing Klara wants is to wake her early.

Outside, the light is a green-tinged grey, full of promise for the day ahead. The grass gleams with the memory of the night's rain, and the air is filled with birdsong, bright on the wind. There is no sign at all of the thing that had screamed in the night.

Klara pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders, though the porch wood is warm under her bare feet - unseasonably so. The whole of the garden seems suffused with joy, with the growth that only comes after something has died and been buried, and Klara smiles as she steps down onto the path and catches sight of the newly disturbed patch of ivy near the gate.

Silverhöjd provides. It always would.

A raven takes flight from one of the spruces, its call familiar as it wheels a circle over Klara's head. Ylva, perhaps, or one of her friends - it was hard to distinguish from a distance.

"Good morning," Klara greets the bird, and it dips its wing in acknowledgement before landing to peck amongst the ivy. "Leave the bones, if you please."

"Leave what bones?"

She hadn't heard the door, but when Klara turns, Esmeralda is there on the porch, the haphazard blanket thrown over her shoulders not stopping her from shivering in the camisole and shorts she'd worn to bed.

"Under the ivy," Klara says, before she can think better of it. "I didn't mean to wake you."

Esmeralda shrugs, dropping into the porch swing and burying her feet under the pillows piled there. "I wasn't asleep. I dreamed I killed someone."

It seems the wrong time to remind her that she _had_ killed Eddie, so, with a last glance at the raven, Klara returns to the porch and says, "The world will never lack nightmares to give people like us." Her hand hovers over Esmeralda's shoulder, a comfort she's not sure she's earned the right to give yet.

"It wasn't a nightmare," Esmeralda says. She doesn't look up, but she leans back against the arm of the swing. Closer to Klara, close enough Klara can feel the magic clinging to her, crackling like the beginnings of a lightning storm. "Not really. It felt like someone watching out for me. Us."

And she tilts her head back, enough that Klara can see the green of her eyes starkly vibrant against her pale skin, and her gaze is so full of surprised, sudden clarity that Klara can't help but reach down to take her hand. Esmeralda lets her, curls her cold fingers around Klara's own, and the knot of tired fear in Klara's heart loosens slightly.

"We are protected here," she says. "Always will be, as long as the trees stand." Esmeralda offers a hint of a smile, and it gives Klara the courage she needs to ask, "Would you like to see what you dreamed of?"

Esmeralda nods, dropping Klara's hand to gather her blanket again as she stands. "It's warm now," she says, surprise creasing her forehead as the sunbeams begin to creep through the slatted roof. "Warmer than..."

But she trails off, shaking away the need for words, and she looks almost peaceful as she walks with Klara down to the garden.

Colours deepen in the light, wolfsbane and cranesbill rising up from the buttercups carpeting the long way down to the treeline. The ravens are beginning to cluster in the ivy bed - three of them, now, watching the skogsrå approach with something like impatience in their clever eyes.

Klara sees it first: the space where the birds have peeled away the vines to reveal white skin mottled crimson, the shock of black hair. Esmeralda stops a moment later, and Klara watches her breathe through her new understanding: dead, he looks more like his brother than he ever did in life. 

"He -" Esmeralda begins, "Jörgen, I dreamed -"

"I know. It's a hard thing, wanting to kill," Klara says. Rests a careful hand on Esmeralda's shoulder and feels the gooseflesh rough under her fingertips. "Silverhöjd does what it can to ease that for us."

"I would have," Esmeralda murmurs. She turns to face Klara and, with the sunlight streaming through her hair and the ivy curling around her ankles, she looks more alive and free than she ever has. "And I would have meant it." She laughs, and above them the trees shake with laughter of their own, sending down a cascade of spruce needles that fall glimmering and green in Esmeralda's hair, across Klara's shoulders, over the black hellebore peeking through the ivy.

Esmeralda looks up at her, shy even through her joy, and Klara cannot remember the last time she was so happy to see a life come to an end.

"I know," Klara says once more, and does not say, _but it is better to have the forest kill for us, for it is better at hiding_. The last of Jörgen will be gone soon, and Esmeralda doesn't need that memory. Not when she has to keep the memory of Eddie falling, not when Silverhöjd's riot of colour stands ready to wrap her up and shield her from anything more.

Instead, Klara opens her arms, feels the breeze lift the wings of her shawl like the memory of flight, and as Esmeralda steps into her embrace, the world rights itself once more: there are only the trees smiling down on her, and Esmeralda, and the body in the ivy. 


End file.
